Sorry. I have missed three days. In those three days I flew from Oklahoma to Minnesota and hung out with Patrick and his parents (who were visiting until this morning). I haven't really taken any pictures the past couple of days, so I'm using two from my last day in Oklahoma. The first one is a picture of my grandma and Patrick's quilt. She worked on the quilt for four months and finished it just hours before I left for Mankato.
The second picture is of my grandma, me, and my mom.
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Happy New Year's Eve!
Went out to McNellie's last night with Nick, Amber, Kelsey, Matt, Mark, and Andy. We had several Irish Car Bombs and then went and hot tubbed at Nick's house. It was nearly 70 degrees yesterday! Can you believe that? Today my brother and I got new glasses. My family and I also ate at a Thai buffet and it was awesome. I am sad that I have to leave tomorrow to go back to the tundra. :(
Merry Christmas! My brother taught me how to play Dominoes last night. Today my mom, dad, brother, and I played two games. I won one!
Happy Christmas Eve! Shereen came over with Bubby and gave me some earrings and a casserole cookbook. Get ready to eat some casseroles, Patrick. My mom opened one of her presents and it was Tequila Rose. We are now enjoying her present. :)
Today I met with a woman who is in the HR field. This was my attempt at networking so that I can get a job in Oklahoma in the next six months. I suck at networking, so I was proud that I did this today. This evening my mom and I took Crash to puppy school. Crash was definitely the bad kid in the class. He started getting really bored and tried to shake off his leash toward the end of class. We are working on "watch me" and getting him to recognize his name. This is a picture from a few days ago when I was playing with Crash and Kaylen out in the front yard.
P.S. Notice that someone knocked over the light pole in the background.
This is my brother's pet Madagascar cockroach. Apparently he had two, but they paid some guy at work to eat the other one. DISGUSTING! My brother said he hadn't fed or watered this one for two weeks and it was still alive. I'm sorry that this will probably disgust most people who read this.
Last night was Nicholas' birthday party in Norman. It was more like a reunion though. It was a great night - I really miss college sometimes. The first picture is of Matt, me, and Joe. The second one is of Lauren and I when we discovered that we had the same haircut! 
Tonight I'm in Tulsa, Oklahoma! It was a direct flight so it seemed really fast even though Patrick had to drop me off at the Mall of America in the morning and I shuttled to the airport in the afternoon. When we landed the pilot told us that it wasn't very nice out in Tulsa, but in the same breath he said it was 47 degrees and everyone gasped! Here in Tulsa you don't have to wear gloves or scrape ice and snow off your car every time you get into it.
So my pictures are of my crippled brother and his dog, Crash. I have a feeling that I am going to be my brother's bitch this week since he's on crutches. Also, Crash will learn to be our bitch (just kidding) because he is going to be enrolled in puppy school! Isn't he cute?
I GOT A NEW CAMERA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's an f'ing blizzard outside! I went and got my hair cut today and picked up a few groceries. Every time I came back to my car, I had to clean off the fresh snow. Then Natalie and I went to the gym and it was sort of scary going up the hill. Everyone was going 15mph, which was good. I am definitely not leaving the house for the rest of the day. These are picture of the woods up the hill from my apartment and the front of my apartment. Don't the two trees look like two, fat, cold guards? I think so.
Patrick, Ann, Natalie, and I made Christmas cookies tonight. The recipe said it would make 60 cookies, but it really only made 40. Lies! They turned out pretty well though. Then we watched Tremors and crazy TLC shows for the rest of the night. Also, there was a crazy blizzard outside.
Yesterday Patrick and I made potato soup. He got out the potato peeler and started peeling potatoes. I was shocked because I didn't know we had a potato peeler. I had been peeling the potatoes with a knife this whole time. I ended up sucking at using the potato peeler though, so I chopped and he peeled.
This is our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. We actually have presents underneath now! Since I'm officially on vaycay now, I have almost finished up my shopping and wrapped all of my gifts. Also, I bought ingredients to make homemade Christmas cookies. Hopefully Ann, Natalie, Patrick, and I will do some baking tomorrow! I would also like to report that I spent almost five hours knitting and watching Forensic Files today. I know, I know. I enjoyed it though.
Patrick sent me this picture while I was at work this morning. I would have rather been with them! No more work or school for a month!
My oh my, tonight was an interesting night. We went to Westwood to say goodbye to Lisa. She is on sabbatical in Singapore next semester. Let's just say there was a lot of surprises, yelling, and making out tonight! You know - the kind of things that make the best kind of nights. :) Here is a picture of everyone toasting to Lisa.
I just made my first art purchase! It was quite expensive, but I recently came into some unexpected money (or Christmas gifts), so I went ahead and did it. Patrick and I saw this picture several months ago when he was up visiting. It was really expensive though, so we thought we'd wait to see if we really wanted it. Whenever I went back to the mall a few weeks later though, the store was closed down and so no more picture. Then fast forward eight months. I was at the mall with Nick and Amber while they were visiting and low and behold - the picture appeared again! Anyway, even though it was sort of expensive, it can't be an impulse purchase if I've wanted it for eight months...right?
Mankato is under a winter storm advisory until 6pm tomorrow. We are supposed to get between three to six inches of snow tonight. Exciting if you get to stay home and enjoy it, not so exciting if you have to go take a final and go to work. Why can't we have a snow day!? Today was Patrick's first day on his new work schedule (1 - 10). Hopefully, next semester I can go to work later (like 11) so that I will be able to stay up later to hang out with him at night.
Since I didn't take any pictures today, I'll use this picture from the Christmas party on Friday. This is me with my mug again dressed up in my ugly Christmas sweater. Patrick and I watched the final episodes of Twin Peaks tonight. And there was no real ending! We are both very confused.
Santa make him hurry, tell him he can take the freeway down! Run, run Rudolph cause I'm reeling like a merry-go-round....[These are the Christmas shirts that I made for Patrick and I to wear to the ugly sweater Christmas party.]
It's almost the weekend! Natalie, Ann, and I had a "Girls' Day" today. We ate at a Chinese buffet and then went thrift store and mall shopping. Tomorrow is our White Elephant Christmas party at the Legion so we had to buy White Elephant gifts and ugly Christmas sweaters. I couldn't find any Christmas sweaters so I bought this really ugly red and gold Christmas belt. I think it sort of makes me look like a super hero though, so I don't know what I'm going to do. This is a picture of Natalie and Ann at the thrift store.
Today has been a long day - again. Work was fun though because Tammy and I just made stockings for everyone. We got a little too into it though and started making customized ones for our office-mates who weren't there. As you can see, we have a LOT of people in our office! We barely had enough window space to fit all six of our stockings. Plus, it's a bustling center of activity. Some days we have lines out the door and Tammy has to ask me to hand out numbers so that she can call up our customers one by one. No, but really, aren't the stockings nice? :)
Today has been a long day full of presentations and projects. This picture is from probably the only part of the day when I wasn't stressed out. This is the street in front of my apartment. The snow was melting and the sun was shining. What a pretty picture to go along with a crappy day.
Our apartment feels so empty tonight with no air mattress in the entry way. :( I have a big statistics project due tomorrow. Natalie and I have been working on it all evening. I still have some work to finish up tonight as well. I really can't wait until winter break. But, this has nothing to do with my picture today. This is a picture of a chicken that Bekah got me from Silver Dollar City. The chicken sits on the microwave, but I have yet to figure out the chicken's purpose. Her head opens up. Maybe I will store my riches inside.
It snowed today. And Nick threw a snowball at me on the way to lunch. That Nick! We went to the movies and then we watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. Oh yeah, and Nick's tire was flat and Patrick changed it in the snow. That was pretty exciting! I'm sad that Nick and Amber are leaving tomorrow. :(
I will post two pictures today to make up for yesterday. This first one is from last night. This is Nick and Patrick noticing the mistletoe that is hanging between them. Right after this picture was taken they gently kissed each other.
We are getting ready to go to the Mall of America and then downtown Minneapolis for dinner. Expect an awesome picture tonight.
This is Nick and Amber at the Apple/Honey/Root Beer stand on the way to Minneapolis. I have always wanted to stop at this place, but I never had until yesterday. We bought homemade salsa, honey, pumpkin butter, pickled mushrooms, popcorn, and root beer! When we were checking out we realized that this was the last day it would be open until July (when I will not be in Minnesota). So, it turned out that I finally stopped at the shop the last day I possibly could.
This is a true reaction - this is not staged. I never knew what a disgusting sound a turkey made when you took its bag of guts out. SO GROSS. And then you have to do it again for the neck bag. After I got over my initial disgust, I decided I kind of liked him so I took a picture with it smiling. Then we decided to try and make our brine. We got this big ziplock turkey roasting bag and started filling it with water. At around 30 cups - I let go of the bag (not realizing that I was actually holding part of the water in) and it went EVERYWHERE! All over the stove, the floor, the cat food, my camera!!!! and ME!! Patrick helped me clean all of the nasty turkey water off everything and disinfect everything. Then we just added the salt and sugar to the remaining water and called it a brine. It's now in the fridge. My turkey's name is ShitDick. Happy Thanksgiving!
This is how I spent most of my day. I feel like I'm getting sick. I am trying to take it easy so that I feel well for when Nick and Amber arrive tomorrow night! Patrick and I are planning on finishing our Thanksgiving grocery shopping up tomorrow while everyone else is eating their Thanksgiving dinner. I wonder if our plan will work.
This is a picture of my brother and I at the zoo in Missouri two years ago. We met my aunt and uncle there and walked around all day long with Kaylen looking at the animals. I have obviously been thinking about Ryan today, so I chose to post a picture of him.
Today has been a long statistics-filled day. I literally did statistics for 13 hours. No wonder I mumble about b's and Beta weights when I drunkenly pass out. Because I had such a long day, I was getting ready to go to bed pretty early when I realized I hadn't taken a picture yet. So here is a picture of Fluffy (aka the bed cat). She's excited for bed too. (Are you happy to see her, Mom?)
Patrick and I went to the store tonight and bought some new Christmas lights. I also bought these candy cane-like candles and he bought a Bonsai tree for his desk at work. He was going to post a picture of his tree, but he fell asleep.
This is a picture of Josh and I with our German mugs. He brought mugs back from Germany for our whole class. We keep our mugs at the Legion and Mike (the bartender) wheels them out whenever we come. We are supposed to pass down our mugs to our first years whenever we leave and hopefully this will become a new I/O tradition. Last night was Marquita and Lynn's joint birthday party, so we went to the Legion to sing karaoke and drink from our mugs!
Today my program went and volunteered at a place called "Kids Against Hunger." Basically we made these super nutritious rice meals that they send directly to kids all across the world who are starving. It was actually a pretty fun time. We had an assembly line going - chicken flavor, veggies, soy, rice, weigh, seal, pack. We ended up making over 15,000 meals in a little over two hours. Not bad, huh?
This is me and my awesome coworker, Catherine, at work. She also does a picture of the day blog. This is because we stole the idea from Tammy, a gal we work with. So while Catherine and I have been busy posting pictures every day, guess how many Tammy has posted? ZERO. Yes, that's right. We make her aware of this fact every day. She claims that we are bullying her, but it's really just motivation.
:)
This is a busy week! I feel like every minute is taken up with something. I just keep thinking that next week is only a three day week and it's Thanksgiving (and Nick and Amber are coming!). I took the "Strengthsfinder" test put out by Gallup this evening because I have a phone interview with them tomorrow. It's supposed to identify your talents or strengths. It said that my top five strengths are Maximizer, Arranger, Learner, Responsibility, and Discipline. I have a report on how to properly interact with me if you'd like to know.
Last night we put up our Christmas decorations because it was Shereen's last night. You can clearly see the Oprah star and the mistletoe. Have you ever noticed that Christmas lights never last more than one season? I bought a bunch last year and only half a strand worked this year. Go figure. Like I said, yesterday was Shereen's last day in Minnesota. Now it's back to work instead of play. :(
Sorry I missed a day. Yesterday Shereen and I went shopping at the Mall of America all day long. We ran into a lot of traffic on the way there, so it was kind of frustrating. Overall it was a fun time though! I have never seen such a busy mall. When we came back to Mankato, Karl (Mike) was there! Patrick, Karl, Shereen, and I played "circle of death" and watched an actual funny episode of SNL. "DON'T!!"This is a picture of Patrick and Karl in the midst of the game.
The second picture is of my grandma, me, and my mom. .JPG)
Happy New Year's Eve!
In the afternoon, my mom and I took Crash to the vet and to Pet's Mart to sign him up for puppy school! We also bought him a new blue collar. 
My dad and I then headed to the mall to get some free pearl earrings from a jewelry store. For some reason they sent me a postcard saying that I could come and pick up a free pair of $25 pearl earrings - no purchase necessary! Pretty cool.
We all had a tea party with Princess Kaylen.
Princess Kaylen took off her princess dress so that she could work out with her pops (these are actually 3 pound weights - pretty impressive!). 
After the workout, she built a city. The city was named "Everyone goes to school." The city was soon destroyed, but a new city named "School City" was built in its place.
This is Nick and Amber at the Apple/Honey/Root Beer stand on the way to Minneapolis. I have always wanted to stop at this place, but I never had until yesterday. We bought homemade salsa, honey, pumpkin butter, pickled mushrooms, popcorn, and root beer! When we were checking out we realized that this was the last day it would be open until July (when I will not be in Minnesota). So, it turned out that I finally stopped at the shop the last day I possibly could.
